Things I should have written a blog post about:
1. Omaruru Game Lodge, an awesome weekend spent with Boyo, feeding wild elephants and patting rhinos.
2. My failed attempt to find the ingredients for my mother's brownie recipe.
3. My much failed and physically painful attempt to befriend a bird.
4. The day my hair went up in flames. Yes, the day finally came when I accidentally set fire to myself.
5. Quad biking in the dunes, and in conjunction, what to do if you have to take a pee whilst in the dunes with all males.
But no, I will not write about those things. You must just use your imagination. (However, I will post some photos of Omaruru Game Lodge. And for the record, merely popping over the nearest dune to take a pee is not as easy as it sounds.)
But to the writing part.
Yesterday I sat on the beach. Yes, a novel idea, as no one has dared do that before.
It's winter here, or the end of winter. So, due to the cold, I was the only person out there besides a few kids who, as we know, for some reason, do not feel temperature.
That was entirely too many commas in one sentence.
The kids were playing with something that looked to be alive at one point.
I climbed out onto some exposed reef off the shore and sat on a bit of rock.
Probably I killed a bunch of microscopic aquatic organisms with my jean-clad bottom.
Probably.
I apologize.
Gray mist hung over the ocean, the clouds casting down to grip the horizon in an effect that made me feel like I was stuck in a dome. Like in that scene in "The Truman Show" where Jim Carey reaches the wall of his little movie set world thing after going nuts and sailing across the sea or whatever.
Right. But moving on.
A flock of flamingos had congregated in the shallows, looking cold and out of place, a dash of pink in the monotony of gray.
It struck me as funny that as I sat on this rock out in the water at that moment, that I was just barely in Namibia.
I was at the edge of the huge continental mass behind me. If you looked at the map, I would be a point on the left edge of the black line that denotes the end of Africa and the beginning of the Atlantic.
I'm in land limbo.
It was interesting to me to think that I grew up on the edge of another continental mass just across this ocean. I've already spent years swimming in this ocean, just from a different side.
If I turned had around this day, I would see huge, 3 story houses, hotels, holiday homes. Many with slightly tacky seashore themes. Much like what you would see in Stone Harbor, NJ.
I felt a cold misty breeze blowing as if it were early March back home, winter still lurking in the heavy, salty air.
I watched as little tide pools formed in the rocky reef and tiny, transparent fish darted around them at frenzied angles. I thought about playing with the periwinkles on my Jersey beach growing up. Trying to catch them before they buried beneath the sand. Making a habitat for them in my bucket before an adult told me to go put them back.
It made me feel both connected to my younger years and detached from this current year all at once.
What once was distinctly foreign about this place has now blurred into a continuation of sameness.
It's actually the same story, this side. It's just translated differently.
Once you work out the translation, get past the accent and the intonation and the syntax, it's not so difficult to understand.
Upon sticking a finger in the chilly water and deciding against putting my feet in, I stood and awkwardly hopped my way back to shore in a way I imagine looked very like walking with bare feet on Lego bricks.
If you are waiting for a philosophical point to this story, I suppose I don't have one. If you've read this now and thought "that was a giant waste of my time," then again, I apologize.
After reaching solid ground, my mind again wandered onto other things. There was no epiphany. While calming, the ocean provided no revelation about humanity or life or belief or whatever. I didn't feel compelled to take a photo and attach a meaningful quote and post it to a social media outlet.
It was just an odd moment. A moment where I did not feel confined to one space. I wasn't fully in the present, nor was I lost in the past. I didn't feel as though I was in a distinct, name-able location. Both curious and mundane, disquieting and peaceful, occupying only a tiny piece of the edge of something.
In whatever form it may take, I think we all need more moments like that.
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| Each bungalow has 1 to 2 rooms |
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| Inside |
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| A deck area off of the dining room lets guests greet some of the more friendly animals... |
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| ...or you can just have a beer. |
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| Bar area |
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| Rhino and Goose: buddies for life. Every evening during feeding they meet each other at the gate and spend dinner together. |
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| Giraffes all congregated around a feeder |
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| Here we go safaring |
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| where we made some wrinkly friends. |
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| You can't tell in this photo, but I am the happiest gal alive. |
